In this episode of The Green Tunnel we tell the story of the settler communities that existed along the route of the Appalachian Trail before the AT arrived. We've chosen three examples of those communities, each of which helps tell the story of life in the Appalachian mountains before Benton MacKaye dreamed up the AT in 1921. One community was home to people recently emancipated from enslavement, another was a thriving coal mining and railroad town until the mines played out, and the people of the third community had to rally their friends and neighbors to try to find a little boy who had wandered away from his schoolhouse in 1891. What was life like in the Appalachian mountains before the trail? Find show notes, including a full transcript, at https://greentunnel.rrchnm.org/episode-2-what-came-before/.